IMPLEMENTATION

There is strong central oversight of the line ministries by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, which reports directly to the prime minister. The Commonweath public service, while independent of the government, is strongly motivated to support the government’s program and that level of compliance has arguably increased over the past 10 years.

When appointed to a portfolio, a minister receives a mandate letter from the prime minister, while a deputy minister receives one from the clerk of the Privy Council. The importance of mandate letters depends on the department, and more importantly on changing political and economic circumstances. In the case of the current government, ministers’ mandate letters detail priorities for their department as seen from the center. The minister is subsequently evaluated on his or her success in achieving the objectives set out in the mandate letter. Such a procedure results in the PCO continually monitoring the activities of line department to ensure they are in line with the mandate letter.

There is no official monitoring or oversight of line ministers’ activities. The small size of the cabinet makes it easy to observe the actions of individual ministers. This type of monitoring, rather more informal than formal, is effective. Although line ministries tend to guard the interests of their constituencies, particularly in the case of the fisheries, agriculture and communications industries, the Prime Minister’s Office often accedes to or even orchestrates a special interest-oriented agenda, so conflicts rarely arise. This informal control has become even stronger than before due to the fiscal austerity necessitated by the economic crisis.

The monitoring of line ministries is usually good but considerable variations exist depending on:
• the strength of the prime minister;
• the relationship of the minister with the president;
• the political position of the minister within the majority or as a local notable.

Following from the experience of fragmented policy-making in vertically integrated networks and coordination problems, the Labour-led governments after 1999 re-centralized the steering capacity of the core executive. All contracts between cabinet and line ministries and ministers and chief executives have since to be based on a whole government policy approach. This has been continued after the change of government in 2008. The new government has introduced a performance improvement framework which is intended to strengthen a central-agency approach to assessing, supporting, informing and focusing performance across state services.

Norway is a small, consensual and transparent system. The Office of the Prime Minister knows what is going on. There is cabinet cohesion. There is as always a tug of war between line and coordinating ministries, but the possibility that line ministries should go off on their own contrary to the government line is negligible. That would require a degree of intergovernmental disagreement and breakdown of discipline which has not been seen for a very long time.

The offices of the president and the prime minister effectively monitor line ministry activities. The Korean government utilizes e-government software (the “policy task management system”) to monitor the implementation of policies in real time. Ministries have little leeway in policy areas that are important to the president, such as the Four Rivers Project or finance policies. In general, the Korean bureaucracy is organized in a very hierarchical way, but independence is stronger in areas that are comparatively less important for the president.

The PMO exercises some control over the line ministries. More importantly, the Cabinet as a collective body monitors and controls line ministries very thoroughly. Equally important, the Ministry of Finance monitors line ministries very closely; hence, the Ministry of Finance became very important in this respect in the past years. The budgetary process is generally seen as a key coordinating and monitoring process within the CGO. Thus, there is a rather high degree of monitoring which, however, is not primarily conducted by the PMO - the Ministry of Finance is important in this respect, too.

Switzerland’s government features neither a prime minister’s office nor line ministries, but does offer functional equivalents (see also GO Expertise).
Given the rule of collegiality and the consociational decision-making style, as well as the cooperation at lower levels of the federal administration, there is little leeway for strong deviation. Monitoring is built into the cooperative process of policy formulation and implementation. However, there is considerable flexibility in implementing decisions, and it is an open question whether the federal administration is effectively monitored by the Federal Council (Varone 2007).

Tight integration between the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the Cabinet Office make it possible for a British prime minister to be effective in determining the government’s strategic direction. However, the organizational discontinuities and name changes that this office has experienced (Central Policy Review Staff; No. 10 Policy Unit; No. 10 Policy Directorate; No. 10 Policy Unit), demonstrate that views about the best way of organizing direction and control through the core executive depend very much on the personal views of the serving prime minister, as well as that organizational and administrative fashions change over time.

More important is the role of the Treasury, which is not just a ministry of finance, but also sees itself as responsible for oversight of line ministries’ policy implementation. The degree to which the Treasury exercises oversight depends partly on the political strength of the chancellor of the exchequer. This strength was considerable under the tacit division of responsibilities between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown up to Blair’s departure in 2007. In the two years under review here, the Treasury perhaps lost a little power (though its energy has also been consumed by crisis management). However, the framework put in place by Brown – notably governed by public service agreements that are, in effect, contracts with line ministries – still mean that the Treasury has a strong influence.

Monitoring of departments and agencies is far-reaching, and does not only apply to legislative proposals but also to rule-making. However, monitoring may vary according to the saliency of the issue and the nature of the problem. During the Bush years, the OMB reviewed the performance of more than 1,000 distinct programs, collecting data on more than 6,000 performance measures. President Obama has generally endorsed a strong emphasis on performance measurement, but his administration’s methods in this area are not yet well defined.

The president monitors his or her ministers’ policies constantly. Budget allocation serves as a strong instrument of control.

For sensitive political issues the prime minister has a strong incentive to monitor line ministries. But when it comes to less important issues or details, he has neither the time nor the means for close monitoring. His control is indirect, through the members of his cabinet.

Government monitoring of line ministries is mainly indirect in nature, and the same mechanisms that foster ministerial compliance tend to have monitoring functions as well. These include the preparation and coordination of matters in cabinet committee meetings and meetings such as the government’s evening sessions (iltakoulu). In general, the various forms of interministerial coordination fulfill monitoring functions as well. These forms are, however, interactions in terms of cooperation and consultation rather than monitoring in any strict sense. While the Prime Minister’s Office does monitor line ministries, the monitoring is implicit rather than explicit.

Under the Gyurcsány government, the PMO adopted a hands-on approach and monitored the ministries both comprehensively and effectively. Under the Bajnai government, with its focus on crisis management, some ministries – dealing with public finances, the economy in general or EU resources – were closely monitored, whereas others (e.g., the Ministry of Defense or Ministry of Agriculture) received less attention.

The presidency has the means of controlling line ministries if the current officeholder wishes to exercise it. Calderón is a hands-on president who has routinely dismissed ministers if dissatisfied with their performance. Ministerial turnover is relatively high for a presidential system.

Years ago, the Ministry of Finance introduced a new system for ministerial budget reporting, called “From Budgets to Policy Performance Accountability” (Van Begroting naar BeleidsVerantwoording, VBTB). Although implementation has been difficult, the exercise began to bear fruit in 2007 – 2009, at least in the sense that the line ministries have improved their reporting of countable interventions and performances. On Accountability Day (Woensdag Gehaktdag), parliament discusses tons of annual reports issued by line ministries. Although some argue this only leads to information overload and actually prevents meaningful parliamentary debate, it is equally true that ministries, forced to include policy performance reports (beleidsdoorlichting) in their annual budget reports, have been far more transparent in their goals and priorities than ever before. In addition, the application of regulatory impact assessment procedures for administrative burden reduction gives ACTAL and the Ministry of Finance excellent opportunities for monitoring legislative initiatives by line ministries. One should bear in mind, though, that good monitoring opportunities will not always lead to faithful government policy compliance, as the nature of Dutch politics and government are more likely to lead to a new round of negotiations, bargaining and logrolling. In turn, this leads to a frequent reinterpretation of what government policy actually means.

The government is small, with 15 ministries, and the prime minister is strong. But given the lack of expertise highlighted above, the PMO sometimes lacks the capacity to monitor the activities of all line ministries fully.

The Department of the Taoiseach (the PMO) and the Ministry of Finance are tasked with monitoring line ministries. This seems to result in duplication of functions and expertise, with divisions in the PMO and the Ministry of Finance shadowing the line ministries. A crucial area here is the annual preparation of expenditure estimates, which involves individual ministries submitting preliminary estimates to Finance, followed by a battle for resources as Finance tries to reconcile the total with the global amount available for public spending. This is the stage in the budgetary process when monitoring of line ministries is most effective, and when spending has to be justified in terms of overall government priorities. The effectiveness of this monitoring is difficult to assess objectively. It is certainly far from perfect. It has not prevented massive cost overruns in many recent infrastructure projects, for example. It is also clear that forceful ministers are more successful than others in defending particular spending programs. Until 2007, the strong performance of the economy and the buoyancy of public finances hid structural weaknesses in this area. The Report of the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programs, published in 2009, identified potential expenditure savings of €5.3 billion per year, amounting to 9.3% of relevant expenditure, with associated reductions of over 17,300 in public service employment numbers . Much of these potential savings arise from the elimination of duplication and overlap in ministerial spending. If this figure is realistic, it implies that coordination and control of line ministries have been seriously deficient in recent years.

Generally speaking, the Cabinet Office, established during Koizumi´s years of government, offers the means of monitoring ministry activities. It has also developed the personnel capacity to do so. However, it cannot de facto survey all activities at all times, and it is questionable whether either the prime minister or the chief cabinet secretary have the clout to use this apparatus effectively. The DPJ-government has made efforts to control the budgeting process, taking this function away from the Ministry of Finance, with the Government Revitalization Unit playing an important role in the preparation of the 2010 budget. While this unit still seems to act somewhat erratically, such a body offers a potentially strong mechanism of oversight, and the government seems determined to concentrate budget-making control at the top level of the central government.

The cabinet or government office (Ministerio de la Presidencia) and the PM’s Private Office (Gabinete del Presidente del Gobierno) shadow the activities of all line ministries, but this monitoring by the GO or the prime minister cannot completely guarantee that no sectoral ministry will ever prioritize vertical over horizontal interests.
The government office monitors the activities of line ministries only through weekly meetings, while the PM’s Private Office oversees the flow of political and sectoral information, and keeps the prime minister abreast of the activities of all government line ministries. The PM’s Private Office thus plays a key role in interdepartmental monitoring, but its resources are limited and it has no direct involvement in coordination (only the prime minister or the deputy prime ministers are entitled to play this role).

The activities of line ministries are not monitored regularly or systematically. In some cases, the ministerial bureaucracy resists the policy of the government without serious consequences, particularly in issues of democratization. Cases of pure mismanagement seldom occur.
In general, however, ministries work in cooperation with the prime minister’s office, both because a single-party government is in power, and because the ruling party has staffed the leading ministerial bureaucratic posts with political allies.

Because the Chancellery has no authority over the ministries, there may be some informal monitoring, but none with substantial consequences. Monitoring with consequences takes place only within each of the coalition partners.

There is no formal monitoring by the Office of the Prime Minister as no institutional resources exist to carry it out. However, the small size of the government administration fosters a high level of transparency without the necessity of explicit monitoring tools. In case of conflict, the prime minister acts as conciliator.

The line minister is the head of the ministerial administration. The ministry itself is presided by the Administrator General (AD), who works beneath the minister. In principle, the appointment of the AD is based on merit determined by a competitive exam. In practice, it is mostly political. The ministry of finance, for instance, was administered by Jean-Pierre Arnoldi from 1998 to 2010. The management of the ministry was regularly criticized by the Christian Democratic & Flemish party (CD&V), to which Prime Minister Yves Leterme belongs. Thus, the prime minister did not have the capacity to directly influence this appointment. When Arnoldi retired, a competitive exam was organized and Hans D’Hondt, the former head of the Prime Minister’s Office, was the only applicant with an “A,” a passing grade. All other competitors scored a “C” or lower. With this result now the CD&V has more control over ministry management. Given that these appointments are valid until the individual’s retirement and that the AD is under the orders of the minister, there is little capacity to effectively monitor the minister by his own ministerial administration.
Leterme had only limited power to monitor line ministers through his party. Only five out of 15 ministers belonged to his party (including the ministers of foreign affairs, justice, defense, and public function and public enterprise). These ministers fell well in line with Leterme’s goals most of the time while the majority of ministers remained broadly independent.

In the Czech Republic, the government office formally monitors the activities of the line ministries. During the Topolánek government, however, the effectiveness of monitoring was complicated by the nature of the coalition government and the eroding informal authority of the prime minister in the coalition and his party. Prime Minister Fischer did not enjoy a strong position vis-à-vis the ministers either.

According to the Basic Law, ministers are fully responsible for governing their own divisions. However, they are bound to the general government guidelines drawn up by the chancellor. In topics of general political interest, the cabinet makes decisions collectively. In case of dissent between ministers, the chancellor has the power to serve as an intermediary. The Internal Rules of Procedure require the line ministers to inform the chancellor about all important issues. However, in many cases the chancellery lacks the sectoral expertise to monitor the line ministries’ policy proposals effectively.

Monitoring of line ministries by the PMO remains rather limited, and is not very effective. As a government office, the Presidency of the Council of Ministers is too small to systematically monitor line ministry activities. The minister (without portfolio) for the implementation of the government program, who is attached to the Presidency of the Council, monitors the main legislative activities of the ministries.

Ministries have been obliged to inform the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of legislative progress on a regular basis. However, ministries have been keen on maintaining their autonomy, and monitoring has remained largely formal.

The capacity and will of the Greek PMO to monitor the activities of line ministries depends on the government in power, and on the policy competence of the ministry in question. Generally, the PMO closely monitors the activities of the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of National Defense. The PMO is not always focused on the activities of the rest of the ministries.
In the Karamanlis government, the PMO was from time to time able and willing to closely monitor line ministries. However, as the fiscal performance of Greece in 2008 – 2009 showed, apparently no government organ, even the PMO, was able to control either the runaway public expenditures or the collapse of the state’s capacity to raise revenue. Since October 2009, the PMO under the Papandreou government has made a more concerted effort to monitor line ministries, particularly just after the winter of 2009 – 2010 when the government realized the gravity of the country’s fiscal problem. Indeed, the Papandreou government’s PMO has made a point of tightly controlling line ministries.

During the Fico government, the activities of line ministries were not heavily monitored. The Government Office respected the assignment of ministries in the Coalition Treaty and largely refrained from monitoring the activities of line ministries led by Prime Minister Fico’s coalition partners. Monitoring was stronger in the case of ministers from Smer.